Big Banks Are Told to Review Their Own Foreclosures
Last month, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency scuttled the foreclosure review by independent consultants because it was marred by delays and inefficiency. Instead, the regulator struck a multibillion-dollar settlement directly with the nation’s largest banks, a deal that includes $3.6 billion in payments to aggrieved homeowners.
To accelerate the payments, the comptroller’s office decided to cut out the middlemen, the consultants, from the reviews. In a conference call last week, the government outlined a plan to use the lenders instead, according to people with direct knowledge of the discussion. Banks will now have to assess each loan for potential errors, which will help determine the size of the payments to homeowners.
The decision to tap the banks for support is the latest twist in the review of more than four million foreclosures, a process that has incensed lawmakers and ensnared the nation’s largest lenders. Regulators are eager to make the payments to homeowners, who have languished for more than a year.
In 2012, housing advocates, regulators and some bank executives suggested the government release an initial round of payments to homeowners, people briefed on the matter said. Such a move might have quelled suspicions among homeowners that the independent review was an empty promise, or worse, a fraud. But the effort went nowhere.
Now, the first payments to homeowners are not expected until late March.
Article in full here…
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theres nothing we can do about this it so madening i could scream we should all group together and have a revolution i am game I am sick of this crap come on you guys its time we do somthing
Have a revolution by petition to put the laws by the people to a vote by the people. There are petition sites on the web one is SIGNON.ORG. Petition for funds for a real individual investigation one on one by the homeowners choice by private investigators and find investigators that are trust worthy and not scam artist. Petition for a moritorium on foreclosures. Petitionfor Glass Steagal Act to be reinstated as it was no changes.The people can go around the politicians with speoial interest with public petitions. Peitition for the laws that regulated the financial industry before Clinton deregulated all of this. And for full restitution for the tax payers incomes harmed and mortgage harm. The politicians are not there for us. Go around them. Guns will only cause all of more harm. Call for a bycott of all big banks. Move your money. File Bk or read the Kevin Trudeaui debt cures book. Put these banks in their place. The people can do this.
Fair is fair. I think we should demand equal justice here and do our own tax audits!There is nothing these banks wont do to cheat! to look innocent! That is one conflict of interest I can think of. How can Promontory justify nearly $370 million of dark matter?
$370 million is an utterly implausible amount for the mystery test H.
There is at least one troubling way to fill the gap. Readers may recall we interviewed a firm called SolomonEdwards that advertised that it was in the “file scrubbing” business. We called one of the partners to understand what those services were about. He made clear, in his coded way, that his firm engages in document fabrication, specifically allonge fabrication (allonges are falsified to remedy the failure of the originators to transfer notes properly to the foreclosing party.****). They also do other types of document “remediation”.
At the time of our conversation, March 2012, he said he had 600 people at a bank doing “OCC consent order work”. The partner made it sound as if his firm was engaged directly by his client. But the story may be more complicated.
That bank is almost assuredly Bank of America. At PNC, some of the contractors were recruited through a company that played a “staffing” role, Hilltop, which means it acted as a body shop to Promontory. Others were hired directly by Promontory. One of the PNC consultants was also approached by SolomonEdwards to work at Bank of America under a similar “staffing” arrangement and said that 975 Solomon Edwards people were working at Bank of America. That is confirmed indirectly by a 63 member “alumni of Solomon Edwards B of A project” group at LinkedIn. So it seems clear there was a large group of contractors working through SolomonEdwards at Bank of America.
Now on the one hand, this may simply mean that SolomonEdwards was doing file review and “remediation” with a 600+ person team and on side was also acting as a body shop for Promontory. However, regardless, Promontory did bother getting Hilltop cleared for conflicts in with the OCC (Hilltop was mentioned in the PNC engagement letter) but not SolomonEdwards (in other words, neither firm was cleared for conflicts on the Bank of America conflicts by the OCC, even though Promontory did mention the names of each firm on other engagements, Hilltop for PNC and SolomonEdwards for Well Fargo. It would thus seem a matter of good order to have cleared them both for Bank of America, but that appears not to have happened).
And even if most of the 975 SolomonEdwards employees were working as contractors to Promontory, we still are in the dark as to what they could possibly have been doing, particularly since we believe their billing rates were lower than the levels we’ve assumed in our estimates above.
This is a long way of saying that even when you make allowance for high billing rates, the fact that so much of the real review “work” was actually done by Bank of America on its nickel means that there is a tremendous amount of dark matter in the Promontory billings. On the one hand, this may simply be egregious incompetence; there was certainly plenty of that on display at the far more manageable PNC project. Even so, it is extremely difficult to explain the numbers that credible sources (including people in senior oversight capacities in a position to get good intelligence) believe the Bank of America charges were with any plausible level of review related work. This strongly suggests that Promontory, either in concert with or separately, may have been aware of and was potentially involved in various file “remediation” and records-doctoring activities.
Keep in mind that we’ve provided account from the Tampa Bay contractors of document fabrication of multiple types as well as of deletions from servicer notes that appeared to be to remove incriminating evidence. So there seems to be a very strong likelihood that crimes were committed.***** The only open questions are how wide ranging this activity was, who carried it out, who else was an accessory, and how much were they paid.
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*One proof: the tool used by body shops to qualify candidates for Promontory work looked for expertise in mortgage underwriting and servicing. Underwriting experience is worth very little for analyzing foreclosure issues. Similarly, having servicing people review foreclosure issues is wrongheaded. While they might have experience in the area, the whole point of the foreclosure reviews was to analyze how servicers had managed the loans. It certainly isn’t independent or a “review” to have the people check to see if their own type of work was legitimate or not. Lawyers should have been reviewing these issues.
**There were “staff attorneys” and IT people tasked to the project in Miamisburg, Ohio, the biggest site, who were also Promontory employees, but Michael Joseph was the only Promontory employee in a managerial role in the foreclosure review process. And it was light on supervision of any kind. The “underling” managers were contractors, one of which had had OCC experience, the other had worked at Countrywide.
*** In the unlikely event Promontory or the Bank of America rouses itself to protest that Promontory did perform tests B though G, we’ve provided not only detailed whistleblower reports but also documents used in the reviews that demonstrate otherwise. See posts Part IIIA and Part IIIB
**** Specifically, allonges are separate pieces of paper that are required per the Uniform Commercial Code to be “affixed” to the borrower note. They are used to create space for additional signatures when room on the note has run out. Allonges were simply unheard of prior to 2008, since it is permissible to use the sides and back of a note for signatures (notes are endorsed like a check to convey ownership to the next party [this is a simplified but adequate for this discussion]). There is no need for them in the ordinary course of business, but foreclosures have long ago ceased to resemble a legitimate business. Allonges, which remember are supposed to be affixed, have this funny way of appearing out of nowhere when a borrower about to lose his house points out that the note was never properly endorsed to the party that is trying to foreclose, and only the proper party can foreclose.
***** For starters:
18 U.S.C. § 1512(c) (as amended by Sarbanes-Oxley Act § 1102) (offense encompasses any person who corruptly “alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object, or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or availability for use in an official proceeding”; or corruptly “otherwise obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so.”).
18 U.S.C.§ 1519 (created by Sarbanes-Oxley Act § 802(a)) (offense encompasses any person who “knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case . . . .”).
See United States v. Trauger, No. 3 03330 (N.D. Cal. filed Sept. 25, 2003). In this complaint, the government alleges that the lead audit partner of a public company concealed the alteration of computer and hard copies of audit workpapers, as originally produced to Office of Comptroller of Currency (OCC) and then produced to the SEC, because he wanted to “beef up” the files to make it appear that he had thoroughly considered the accounting issues and available facts during the course of the audits and reviews. The partner allegedly found out how he could de-archive an audit in order to revise and then re-archive the working papers; directed a colleague to backdate the system date on his computer in order to make it appear that printed copies of the altered working papers had been created during the course of the audit; added an undated handwritten note to an original and all copies of a memorandum; and directed that the e-mail evidence of the requests to alter and delete documents itself be deleted.
Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/02/bank-of-america-foreclosure-reviews-why-the-occ-overlooked-independent-reviewer-promontorys-keystone-cops-act-part-vb.html#zZbrLkiFVivydrwK.99
LOOK UP 18 U.S.C. 2 AND 18USC 3 AND 18 USC 4. ALL OFFICERS OF THE COURT(judges and attorneys are to report fruad holding the courts and judicial system first and their clients second) They are in the know or should be in the know to recognize fraud and are mandated to report it. Not to aid in covering it up!
I want to know where all these genus’s in our gov came from?Were they all completely brain damaged before they started the jobs in the mega government or did that happen after they started?I am guessing they were stupid long before they got there big obama break and were prob some complete nerd without impressive backgrounds now they feel a sense of power over the everyday folks.When are the American people going to wake up and see the BS there being spoon fed by our own corrupt elected officials or elected jokers,its all a bloody joke these days so much so that all the president had to talk about was pre-schoolers and immigrants and guns,lets do anything but talk about what is the real deal.Next we will be going to war with North Korea,or Iran or whoever,bring on the diversions.
“Physician Heal thy Self”?
The Insanity of assuming to presume that; any Fiduciarily Conflicted Racketeering cAH Ba’al will: “Police” It’s felonious contumacious cupidic Greedy insatiable Self, is shear: Legal Lunacy based on upon delirium suffered by genetically damaged Interbreeding betwixt incestuous Legal Mercenary Bankster Gangster dementia afflicted hallucinatory Idiot Legal terrorists; masquerading as High officio Know It All’s.
The muddied contaminated Genetic Cess Pool; is Dangerously polluted. Public Safety is in Clear and Present Imminent Danger of in toto DIS-truction?
May the CREATOR save US from the Demoniacs? Pray for restoration of sanity and Rule by HIS law?
Self-regulation, that’ll do it. Daily ineptitude from the Oligarcy, Why even bother?